That's the spirit that led a band of patriots, not much older than most of you, to take on an empire and to start this experiment in democracy we call America. It's what drove young pioneers west to Arizona and beyond. It's what drove young women to reach for the ballot, what inspired a 30-year-old escaped slave to run an underground railroad to freedom.

It's what inspired a young man named Cesar to go out and help farm workers, what inspired a 26-year-old preacher to lead a bus boycott for justice. It's what led firefighters and police officers in the prime of their lives up the stairs of those burning towers and young people across this country to drop what they were doing and come to the aid of a flooded New Orleans.

It's what led two guys in a garage named Hewlett and Packard to form a company that would change the way we live and work, what led scientists in laboratories and novelists in coffee shops to labor in obscurity until they finally succeeded in changing the way we see the world. That's the great American story: young people just like you following their passions, determined to meet the times on their own terms.

They weren't doing it for the money. Their titles weren't fancy: ex-slave, minister, student, citizen. A whole bunch of them didn't get honorary degrees. But they changed the course of history, and so can you, ASU.

So can you, Class of 2009. So can you.

With a degree from this outstanding institution, you have everything you need to get started. You've got no excuses. You have no excuses not to change the world.

Did you study business? Go start a company. Or why not help a struggling not-for-profit find better and more effective ways to serve folks in need?

You study nursing? Go -- understaffed clinics and hospitals across this country are desperate for your help.

You study education? Teach in a high-needs school where the kids really need you. Give a chance to kids who can't -- who can't get everything they need maybe, in their neighborhood, maybe not even their home, but we can't afford to give up on them. Prepare them to compete for any job anywhere in the world.

You study engineering? Help us lead a green revolution, developing new sources of clean energy that will power our economy and preserve our planet.

But you can also make your mark in smaller, more individual ways. That's what so many of you have already done during your time here at ASU, tutoring children, registering voters, doing your own small part to fight hunger and homelessness, AIDS and cancer.

One student said it best when she spoke about her senior engineering project, building medical devices for people with disabilities in a village in Africa. Her professor showed a video of the folks they had been helping, and she said, "When we saw the people on the videos, we began to feel a connection to them. It made us want to be successful for them."